Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 2017; 112(2): 153157

Semitistik crucial flaws in the methodology and arguments in this

book, as well as with some of the final conclusions.
Traditionally, there has been a strong opposition to use
Kogan, Leonid: Genealogical Classification of Semitic. The lexical items for subgrouping. Kogan addresses three com-
Lexical Isoglosses. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter 2015. XV, mon objections (ease of borrowing, unclear value of lexical
734 S. 8. Hartbd. 179,95. ISBN 978-1-61451-726-9. items, and the time gap between the attested languages)
and offers detailed counter-arguments. He, however, does
Besprochen von Naama Pat El: Texas/USA, not mention Hetzrons most convincing argument for favo-
E-Mail: npatel@austin.utexas.edu
ring morphosyntax, namely that morphology is a system,
DOI 10.1515/olzg-2017-0048 while with the lexicon, we are dealing with isolated items.1
This issue is not addressed in the work under review and I
will come back to it below. Despite his criticism of Hetzrons
While it is customary to leave the final evaluation of a
focus on morphosyntax, Kogan adopts the principle that
book to the last paragraph of a review, I would like to state
innovations are more significant than retentions for classi-
from the outset that this is an immensely important and
fication. The application of this principle, however, is vastly
long-overdue piece of scholarship. Although I frequently
different from what Hetzron, and others, have articulated,
find myself in disagreement with Kogan on minor and
in particular with relation to retentions.2 Typically histori-
major details, one is amazed at his judicious scholarship,
cal linguists do not consider retentions, namely leftover
erudition and open-mindedness, which in the form of this
features from a previous stage, relevant for subgrouping. In
book and many other previous publications is a major
other words, languages are grouped by how much they
contribution to the field.
differ from their ancestor in innovative features, namely
This volume is structures as a series of lengthy and
features they developed away from the shared language.
detailed studies pertaining to the lexicon of each node of
Kogan, however, considers some lexical retentions usable
the Semitic family, the internal relation between its va-
for subgrouping. He divides these retentions to trivial and
rious branches, and each nodes relationship to other no-
non-trivial ones (pp. 1617). Trivial retentions are lexemes
des. Each chapter opens with a methodological discus-
that can easily be reconstructed to proto Semitic, e.g., *kalb
sion, reviewing the relevant secondary literature and the
dog, and are indeed not useful. Non-trivial retentions are
validity of the claims made regarding the classification of
lexemes that are not reconstructed to the proto language as
the branch and its internal subgrouping when relevant.
the main entry for a specific semantic value, e.g., *bw / *tw
The short conclusion of the book reviews the main argu-
come; thus, when a language chooses one over the other,
ments and provides a coherent and illustrative represen-
the value of the item for classification is not zero (p. 17). This
tation of the books main findings.
is problematic, because when speakers have only two op-
The book opens with a short review of Semitic classi-
tions, without any conditioning factors, their choice may be
fication with some attention to internal discussion of the
completely arbitrary. Random choices are not very good
principles. Kogan makes the claim that while the Rssler-
diagnostic features even in morphosyntax. For example,
Hetzron emphasis on the importance of morphosyntactic
the famous k/t alternation in the suffix conjugation was
innovations is methodologically sound, in reality these
used by Hetzron to argue for subclassification, but clearly
are hard to find, for two reasons ( 1.3.1, pp. 34): 1) most
could also be a result of a basic analogy, where either 1st
Semitic languages (especially the ancient ones) are rather
person k or 2nd person t generalized throughout the para-
conservative in their morphology and tend to preserve the
digm. Thus, Old South Arabian generalized k while Arabic
old stock of affixes and patterns instead of elaborating
generalized t.3
new ones, and 2) even if there were such innovations,
they would be hard to find because of the fully or partly
consonantal nature of their scripts. Furthermore, Kogan
argues that some morphosyntactic innovations are in 1 [W]hen one proceeds to morphology, one does not deal with sin-
contradiction to other innovations, a fact that leads gle items, but with systems." Hetzron, Robert (1976). Two Principles
of Genetic Reconstruction." Lingua 38, p. 92.
scholars to give more weight to certain features over
2 As innovations, Kogan includes several categories: new formations
others. The books aim is, therefore, to add another tool to of known lexemes, such as P-Arm *man < *ma + PS *VnVy vessel;
allow more holistic classification, namely basic vocabu- borrowing in the proto stage; and lexemes with no reliable etymology.
lary. I agree with Kogan in principle: classification should 3 John Huehnergard. Features of Central Semitic in: A. Gianto
include basic vocabulary; however, I see a number of (ed.), Biblical and Oriental Essays in Memory of William L. Moran (Ro-
me: Pontificium Insitutum Biblicum, 2005), pp. 168169.

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154 Semitistik

Furthermore, Kogan argues that languages have only
one basic exponent for each concept. Thus, when two
lexemes are attested in a language, but one is more com-
mon, Kogan treats the less common one as immaterial. For
example, he suggests that Phoenician and Ugaritic use b/
pcl do but Hebrew uses cy, while in fact Hebrew uses
both of these verbs (p. 372). In every language lexemes
have context, and semantic fields may be divided between
several items. For example, English uses see and look to
express the use of eyesight, whereas Norwegian has only
se. When we compare between them, we wouldnt claim
that English uses look while Norwegian uses se, because
clearly, English also uses see.
To avoid the problem of giving each item an equiva-
lent weight, Kogan suggested looking at clusters: a num-
ber of lexemes of various types all found in the same ge-
nealogical group; each item individually may be attested
in other branches but not in combination with other lexi-
cal items. Kogan argues that such an approach circum-
vents claims of random changes. The problem is that these
clusters are completely arbitrary; for example, Kogan
offers these to connect Ethio-Semitic: *cawp bird, * lm
be black, *whb give, *m come and *Vb fat. Each
of these is attested elsewhere and almost all of them are
attested in Syriac. Clusters of lexical items are used in
Indoeuropean Linguistics as well, but there they form a
coherent semantic cluster of innovative lexemes.4 Addi-
tionally, while this method may yield results in modern
spoken languages, where one can elicit lexemes, can we
really be sure that all the relevant vocabulary is re-
presented in classical Semitic languages? Some of these
languages are highly literary and may be used primarily
for religious or commercial purposes and so may not re-
flect the spoken vocabulary, where other lexical compo-
nents are much more common.
Another core problem is the choice to use the Swadesh
wordlist. This list is reviewed in chapter 1, and in general,
there can be few objections about the analysis of the in-
dividual items.5 The Swadesh list was composed with the
expressed goal of avoiding culturally specific or environ-
ment-dependent items. It covers aspects of human life that
are perceived to be universal. Since its introduction in
1948, the list has been used extensively; however, as many
scholars have noted, this list is not based on any quanti-
tative study or concept of least-borrowability. In other
words, the concept of core or basic vocabulary that is more
resistant to borrowing has not been fully tested in the
formation of this list. In fact, later studies have found the
Swadesh list deficient in this respect. A more suitable tool
(though still not perfect) is the Leipzig-Jakarta list, which
is based on a cross-linguistic study of borrowed lexemes.6
It unfortunately does not include a single Semitic lang-
uage, but it supplies a better concept of which semantic
fields are least prone to be borrowed, and also the relative
stability of a concept, its simplicity and universality. The
new list overlaps somewhat with Swadesh (62 %), yet a
large number of items from Swadesh are not included in
the Leipzig-Jakarta list, because they have proven to be
quite borrowable. Some of these lexemes are of great in-
terest to Semitists: die (v), kill (v), all, person etc. Im not
implying that these items are borrowed in Semitic, but
rather that the Swadesh list is problematic, and that Ko-
gans assertion that it offers only a slight probability of
borrowing" (p. 343) is not accurate. As his own research
shows, the Swadesh list does not offer any guarantees:
Modern South Arabian, for example, reveals massive
borrowing from Arabic to replace items from the list (p.
589). Furthermore, in the majority of the branches, an
analysis of the Swadesh list yields no meaningful results.7
In such cases, Kogan compares the entire attested lexicon
of the relevant languages to find exclusive lexical iso-
glosses. This raises a number of questions: first, what is
the point of using the Swadesh list if we then reject its
results when it does not provide what we are looking for?
Second, comparing the entire vocabulary of a language
carries a risk, as one is potentially comparing unrelated
genres and registers. It may work well with living lang-
uages, like Modern South Arabian, where one can elicit
lexemes, but we dont have access to equivalent vocabu-
laries for all languages. Furthermore, Kogan makes much

4 See, for example, Joseph Salmons (2012). A History of German (Ox-
ford), pp. 2426, for a discussion of the shared lexicon of Celtic and
Germanic.
5 In some cases, there may be some doubt wether a specific item
should be reconstructed to PS rather than to a lower node. For exam-
ple, *aad one should be proto West Semitic (not (PS). See Aren
Wilson-Wright (2014). The Word for 'One' in Proto-Semitic," Journal
of Semitic Studies 59/1: 113. The demonstrative *d this is unlikely
to be PS, given that East Semitic lacks it all together. The Arabic word
for moon (qamar) may be related to the root to be bent attested, e.
g., in Mishnaic Hebrew.
6 Uri Tadmor, Martin Haspelmath, and Bradley Taylor (2010). Bor-
rowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. Diachronica 27/2:
226246.
7 For example, analyzing the basic division in Semitic, Kogan conc-
ludes that the Swadesh wordlist provides a rather limited amount of
evidence for the historical unity of West Semitic (p. 71). Regarding
the analysis of Ugaritic basic vocabulary, Kogan concludes that the
evidence from the Swadesh list does not yield any unambiguous
results (p. 275). For Central Semitic there are 6 shared lexemes based
on Swadesh (pp. 173179) and over a hundred from additional lists (p.
220).

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of the number of attestations of a specific lexeme, namely
whether a lexeme is well attested, exotic" or hapax.
This approach is highly suspect when pre-modern lang-
uages are concerned. Can we truly say that the Hebrew
word gbinn cheese is exotic just because our sources
cite it only once? Finally, the supplemental lists, even
more than the Swadesh list, comes with no indication of
borrowability. Since in some cases the Swadesh list is not
very helpful, most of the material used for subgrouping
comes from these supplemental lists. Kogan makes a case
that borrowing is not a major problem when one is rest-
ricted to the basic strata of vocabulary, where loanwords
are empirically known to be rare (p. 6), but he does not
restrict his research to what is considered basic vocabu-
lary (e.g. be barren, sing, be pregnant, festival, mole logically conditioned changed (*ank > *ank > Can.
etc.).
Even if one is convinced that there is merit to incor-
porating the lexicon in genealogical studies (and I am),
the question is what weight does it carry in the overall
evaluation of the evidence. Kogan does not address this
question directly. On the one hand, he does accept the
validity of the morphosyntactic method, and the essen-
tial correctness of the results achieved on its basis (p. 5).
On the other hand, in various sections he favors results
based on lexical evidence over morphosyntactic features.
For example, Deir cAll is regarded as sharing a common
ancestor with proto Aramaic on the basis of 6 lexical items
(p. 418419), while in any other respect there is no specific
Aramaic connection.8 Furthermore, the text contains a
number of Canaanite lexical items and various features,
which are either not found in Aramaic (like the N stem)
or are equally attested in Canaanite.9 The connection
between Ugaritic and Canaanite/Phoenician is also prob-
lematic. Kogan accepts that Ugaritic lacks core Canaanite
features, such as the Canaanite shift and the change of
the 1st singular pronoun ending *-k > *-k (which sub-
sequently also influenced the 1st singular suffix on the
perfect: -t) .10 Nevertheless, Kogan suggests that Ugaritic
8 John Huehnergard. Remarks on the Classification of the North-
west Semitic Languages. In J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij (eds.),
The Balaam Text from Deir cAll Re-Evaluated (Leiden: Brill, 1991),
pp. 282293.
9 Jo Ann Hackett (1984). The Balaam Text from Deir All. Chico:
Scholars Press, 1984; Baruch Halpern (1987.) Dialect Distribution
in Canaan and the Deir Alla Inscriptions. In David M. Golomb
(ed.), Working with No Data: Semitic and Egyptian Studies Presented
to Thomas O. Lambdin, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Pp. 119139.
10 He does not, however, mention two other salient features: the
pattern of D and C, which reflects a different pattern in Ugaritic (a-
li-ma) than in Canaanite (*qittila). See John Huehnergard. Historical
Phonology and the Hebrew Piel. In W. R. Bodine (ed.), Linguistics
Semitistik 155
and Phoenician should constitute a node of their own,
under Canaanite and opposite Hebrew; this subgrouping
is only substantiated by lexical evidence, while morpho-
syntactic evidence is mostly stacked against it.11 There is
no doubt that morphosyntactic features sometimes con-
tradict each other and scholars need to determine the
weight of which feature is more substantial. I find however
that I am not convinced that the weight of lexical items
should sway us more than morphosyntactic ones. When
considering morphosyntactic innovations, a shared pro-
posed path of development is essential to the evaluation of
a feature. The Canaanite change of 1cs *-t > t is motivated
by an earlier phonological change that first likely affected
the independent pronoun through a series of phono-
*ank) and later the subject suffix on the verb. This is an
example of a systematic, complex and dependent change,
which is unlikely to randomly occur elsewhere. This type
of explanation cannot be employed to account for com-
mon lexical items. That does not mean that they are not
shared features, merely that they are not very strong sha-
red features.
While I disagree with Kogan on some methodological
issues, I accept that there could be merit to integrate basic
vocabulary in genealogical studies, though I do not think
that the formula proposed in this book works. Despite my
reservations outlined above, this is an exceptional book in
its coverage and accessibility. It is well written, well
organized and fully and coherently transliterated. Any
future study on subgrouping needs to account for the
claims therein. Despite its lack of engagement with gene-
and Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1991), pp.
209229. Additionally, the generalization of 1cp suffix nu to all posi-
tions is most likely not a Ugaritic feature; see LUGAL En-na-a the
king, our lord (PRU 3 41 ff.:19).
11 Kogan offers a number of additional features suggesting a closer
Ugaritic-Canaanite connection. This is not the place to discuss them
in detail, but at least one of them seems unlikely: Ugaritic II-weak
participles, like qm, which may reflect /qam/. Kogan argues that they
follow the Canaanite pattern, like Hebrew qm, not the expected *q-
til. It does appear so superficially, but these are not identical cases.
Canaanite shows *qatal pattern for II-weak, because they are almost
unanimously intransitive. The few transitive ones also take this pat-
tern presumably as a result of paradigm pressure. It is not clear that
Ugaritic follows the same path. Tropper seems to suggest that transi-
tive verbs take the pattern *qtil: /bn/; see Joseph Tropper. Ugariti-
sche Grammatik (Mnster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000), p. 648. Furthermore,
there are examples of *qtil pattern even for intransitive verbs in
Ugaritic. All of this suggests that if in fact Ugaritic shows the same
pattern as Canaanite, the process started much later in Ugaritic and
has not been completed by the time the language is attested. This is
more indicative of Ugaritic being related laterally to Canaanite, rather
than being a Canaanite dialect.
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156 Semitistik
ral historical linguistics studies, its clear presentation of
the material will allow non-Semitic linguists to follow the
arguments relatively easily. I wish it didnt cost an arm
and a leg, but even so, this will undoubtedly become a
seminal work in our field.
Mller, Kathrin (Hg.): Anton Spitaler: Erste Halbverse in
der klassisch-arabischen Literatur. Mnchen: Bayerische
Akademie der Wissenschaften 2016. VII, 151 S. 4 = Phi-
losophisch-historische Klasse. Abhandlungen. Mnchen,
Neue Folge 142. Hartbd. 48,00. ISBN 978-3-7696-131-2.
Besprochen von Nefeli Papoutsakis: Mnster/Deutschland,
E-Mail: nefpapou@yahoo.gr
DOI 10.1515/olzg-2017-0049
As the impressive wealth of classical Arabic philological
writings testifies to, philology and its various branches
(grammar, syntax, lexicography, semantics and stylistics)
occupied a central place in the intellectual and cultural
life of the Arabic-speaking peoples throughout the pre-
modern era. Philologists of all specialisms argued and
theorized about the problems of their science on the basis
of loci probantes, that is to say, probative quotations,
which in their overwhelming majority consisted of lines
of poetry and served to document the correct linguistic
usage, establish the rules of the language and illustrate its
rhetorical potential. In classical Arabic such loci probantes
were called awhid (sg. hid), which literary means able to spot 818 first half-lines, which he registered in
witnesses (see Cl. Gilliot, Shawhid, in Encyclopaedia transliteration together with all relevant data (poet, metre,
of Islam, Second Edition). These loci probantes themselves
became the subject of a very extensive literature, as se-
veral commentaries were written on the awhid used
in the authoritative works of the various branches of
philology (see Claude Gilliot, Les citations probantes
(awhid) en langue, in Arabica, 43/2 (1996), pp. 297 mistichs had been recorded in Abdassallm Muammad
356). For apart from the philological problems involved
and the suitability of the awhid for the purpose of
solving them, several other issues, such as the attribution,
dating and precise meaning of numerous verses that were
cited anonymously and/or out of context, had to be ad-
dressed and clarified.
In 193445 the German Arabists A. Fischer and E.
Brunlich published an Index of the awhid discussed taler: Erste Halbverse in der klassisch-arabischen Literatur,
and analyzed in the most authoritative classical Arabic
awhid-commentaries and other related works that were
accessible to them at that time (Schawhid-Indices: Indices
der Reimwrter und der Dichter der in den arabischen
Schawhid-Kommentaren und in verwandten Werken er-
luterten Belegverse, Leipzig/Wien 1945). That publica-
tion, which became an indispensable working tool for all
those specializing in classical Arabic poetry, grammar and
lexicography and the history of Arabic philology, was
a parergon to an Arabic dictionary which Fischer and
Brunlich were working on; as such it was not meant to be
exhaustive and had several shortcomings due to the poor
quality of the editions of the Arabic texts available to the
authors.
In 1981, shortly before Fischer and Brunlichs Indices
were reprinted (1982), Anton Spitaler (19102003), a dis-
tinguished German professor of Semitic philology at the
University of Munich (19481978) and an expert in Arabic
philology and classical literature, published a list of
corrections and addenda to that work (Ergnzungen und
Berichtigungen zu den Schawhid-Indices von A. Fischer
und E. Brunlich in Hans R. Roemer and Albrecht Noth
(eds.), Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen
Orients: Festschrift Bertold Spuler zum Siebzigsten Ge-
burtstag, Leiden 1981, pp. 406422). In that article Spitaler
announced the publication of an index of those awhid
that consist of the first hemistich of a verse only and which
therefore could not be identified or were wrongly placed in
Fischer and Brunlichs Indices, a work that indexes the
loci probantes alphabetically according to their rhyme
word, not according to the verse beginning (in several
cases Fischer and Brunlich had mistaken the first for the
second hemistich or were unable to identify the verse).
Unfortunately, Spitaler died while still working on his
Index of first hemistich awhid. Meanwhile he had been
rhyme, source, etc.) in a card catalogue. 636 of those
hemistichs had already been registered in Fischer and
Brunlichs Indices, but Spitaler updated and corrected the
data given there and supplied several verses with interes-
ting and valuable comments of his own (another four he-
Hrn, Muam awhid al-arabiyya, Cairo 1972, an Arabic
index similar to that by Fischer and Brunlich). Besides, he
arranged the half lines alphabetically according to the verse
beginning in transliteration. Preparing them for publica-
tion, he had managed to produce a fair copy of all entries to
the end of the letter k.
The present volume (Kathrin Mller (ed.), Anton Spi-
Munich 2016), published by the Bavarian Academy of
Sciences, is a posthumous edition of that precious mate-
rial made by Kathrin Mller, a German Arabist (researcher
at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences) and one of Spitalers
last doctoral students. Mller, who had assisted Spitaler in
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